Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., insists that the FBI has unfairly charged incidents of domestic terrorism based on race or religion, despite being told that such charges don’t exist in a House hearing on Tuesday.
Ocasio-Cortez argued that violent perpetrators who were white, like at the Tree of Life synagogue shooting or the 2015 shooting at the South Carolina church where nine African Americans were killed, were let “off the hook” with hate crime charges instead of being charged with “domestic terrorism.” Domestic terrorism charges, however, do not exist, nor has a law been passed by Congress defining specifically what domestic terrorism charges would be, though there is a statute defining domestic terrorism itself.
“You’re using the word ‘charge,'” FBI Assistant Director for Counterterrorism Michael McGarrity said to Ocasio-Cortez in the hearing. “So, as I said before, there is no domestic terrorism charge 18 USC § 2339 ABCD for a foreign terrorist organization. So, what we do both on the international terrorism side with the homegrown violent extremists and domestic terrorism, we’ll use any tool in the toolkit to arrest them.”
McGarrity reiterated multiple times that the cases Ocasio-Cortez mentioned were treated as domestic terrorist cases and events, but said that those cases would end up being charged through the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Homeland Security. After McGarrity’s explanation, Ocasio-Cortez asked again if the “actual charge” was domestic terrorism.
“You’re not going to find a charge of domestic terrorism out there,” McGarrity said. “Some of the definitions we’re using, I think we’re talking past each other.”
Ocasio-Cortez brought up the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando and the San Bernadino shooting as examples of terrorism charges, positing that the the cases were only tried as such because the suspects were Muslim.
“Doesn’t it seem like because the perpetrator was Muslim, that the designation would say it’s a foreign organization?” Ocasio-Cortez asked.
McGarrity constantly said “no” during Ocasio-Cortez’s question, explaining to her that charges are not dictated by a perpetrator’s race or religion.
Instead, McGarrity said that in the incidents perpetrated by Muslims, the offenders were adhering to the doctrine of a foreign terrorist organization, such as al Qaeda, ISIS, or al Shabaab. The FBI refers to individuals like this as “homegrown violent extremists,” which is a different distinction than what they call a “domestic terrorist.” McGarrity explained that hate crimes and weapons charges were used to prosecute domestic terrorists.
While McGarrity concurred with Ocasio-Cortez that white supremacy is a global issue, there has not been a group or network of white supremacists classified by the federal government as a terrorist organization, according to ABC News.
Ocasio-Cortez would later call the hearing “wild” on Twitter, saying that her team followed up on the info McGarrity gave her, but insists that she still wasn’t wrong.
“This hearing was wild,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “First the FBI witness tried to say I was wrong. I tried to be generous + give benefit of doubt, but then we checked. I wasn’t. Violence by Muslims is routinely treated as ‘terrorism,’ White Supremacist violence isn’t. Neo-Nazis are getting off the hook.”
Ocasio-Cortez has yet to explain what McGarrity may have gotten wrong or what specific information she looked back over with her team.
This hearing was wild.
First the FBI witness tried to say I was wrong. I tried to be generous + give benefit of doubt, but then we checked. I wasn’t.
Violence by Muslims is routinely treated as “terrorism,” White Supremacist violence isn’t.
Neo-Nazis are getting off the hook. https://t.co/RCjp4687by
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 5, 2019
